Psst, psst. Looking for a free breakfast, lunch and cocktail at a swanky downtown Toronto hotel?

Look no further than the party thrown at Ontario taxpayers’ expense on Nov. 26 at the Royal York. I guess the Ritz-Carlton and the Shangri-La were booked.

But as they say, there’s no free lunch. You’ll have to sit through an eye-glazing day of talking heads, presumably in French about Ontario’s francophonie being under siege.

Basically, big-time spender and narcissistic French Language Services Commissioner Francois Boileau is holding a “symposium” to “offer a wide range of activities” and discuss how great his recommendations were in his 2017-18 annual report.

The conference crams 25 speakers into one day. It’s a mixed bag of presenters from all over Ontario including lawyers, journalists, academics and even Google Canada.

Why this is even proceeding is beyond me. His office was put under the authority of Ontario ombudsman Paul Dube last week. The party seems to be more about creating a cult of personality around Boileau than anything else.

Much hysteria, politics and emotions surrounding the folding of Boileau’s office into Dube’s have made this a national issue. It’s as if it’s the funeral of the French language in Ontario.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week weighed into the debate from a press conference in none other than Papua New Guinea. He said: “I was deeply disappointed by the decision of the Ontario government to cut services and protections for the francophone minorities in Ontario.”

Federal Minister of Tourism, Official Languages and La Francophonie Melanie Joly called it a “devastating decision” having “severe consequences” for the Franco-Ontario community and demanded a meeting “as soon as possible” with Caroline Mulroney, the Ontario minister responsible for francophone affairs.

Trudeau and his ministers like to portray the right as creating wedge issues to divide the population. In this case, it’s the pot calling the kettle black. They are trading in virtue signalling and inflaming the francophone population for no other reason than to politicize the issue.

Let’s look at the cold hard facts.

Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dube. (Postmedia files)

All 13 employees working for Boileau are being transferred to the ombudsman — another officer of parliament. All of them. Presumably Boileau could join his gang too, but he wouldn’t be the top guy, of course. So, he said he’d continue drawing his salary until May 1, doing I don’t know what.

Boileau has said that however great Dube is, Dube doesn’t have the same francophone advocacy platform as he enjoyed. On that point, he is completely wrong.

I was the Ontario ombudsman for over 10 years and advocated for a better mandate over the public sector, better treatment for children with autism and all types of other measures that I saw were part of my advocacy role.

In a speech I gave 10 years ago, I said: “The ombudsman acts as a barometer that forecasts storms that may blow over the public from high places in government or the business world; we are a horsefly that buzzes and bites at the slow-moving beast of bureaucracy; we are an oilcan that helps fix big organizations when they get rusty and creaky — and we’re a safety valve for pent-up public dissatisfaction with state and corporate juggernauts.”

The fact that jellyfish Dube likes to work in a stealth fashion is more telling of him than how his office should work.

As far as complaints are concerned, Boileau took in all of 315 complaints, but only 186 were deemed admissible. His budget ballooned from mid-$700,000 in 2008-09 to $2.7 million in 2017-18. That’s currently over $14,500 per complaint. How does that make sense in any fiscal environment, especially the current dismal one?

Is it any wonder that Premier Doug Ford decided to move the free-spending Boileau’s office into Dube’s? And as Ford has promised, not one job was lost and the responsibilities of independently fending for Franco-Ontarians were untouched.

Maybe this is a wake-up call for Dube, who has quickly returned the ombudsman’s office to the backwaters it used to thrive in.

In the meantime, as the symposium advertises, it’s “free, but places are limited.”

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.